DoD Still Using 8 Inch Floppy Disks to Coordinate ICBM and Nuke Operations

Kaboom.

Maybe they use the ’80s flick “War Games” as a training film, too.

The U.S. Defense Department is still using — after several decades — 8-inch floppy disks in a computer system that coordinates the operational functions of the nation’s nuclear forces, a jaw-dropping new report reveals.

The Defense Department’s 1970s-era IBM Series/1 Computer and long-outdated floppy disks handle functions related to intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers and tanker support aircraft, according to the new Government Accountability Office report.

The department’s outdated “Strategic Automated Command and Control System” is one of the 10 oldest information technology investments or systems detailed in the sobering GAO report, which calls for a number of federal agencies “to address aging legacy systems.”

The revelations about the various backwards states of computer systems in different parts of the federal bureaucratic behemoth read like an “Early Days of Tech” history book. Programming languages from the Carter era, operating systems that haven’t been supported by the vendors in over a decade, everything but smoke signals. The Roman Catholic Church modernizes itself at a faster pace.

Here’s an idea: maybe take some of the $8+ billion spent annual to keep the EPA pimping climate hysteria to the faithful and use it to, oh, I don’t know, enhance our nuclear response capabilities.

Of course I’m kidding.

Use all of it.